This story concerns the Round River in the Great Basin west
of the Rockies. The basic feature of this story is from Claude
Studebaker of the Bureau of Reclamation in Boise, circa 1948.
Many Department of the Interior people are qualified
hydrologists and know that this is a region of hydrologic
peculiarities. The Humboldt River in Nevada, for example, has
no mouth, but flows from both ends toward the middle. In
earlier days before so much of Lower Klamath Lake was
reclaimed, the Link River flowed into the Klamath River during
conditions of low flow; but during conditions of high flow, the
Klamath River flowed into the Link River.

A similar anomaly, changed by time, was the Round River. Its
basin lay generally north of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, east
of the Steens Mountains, south of the Uintah Mountains, and
west of the Kaibab Mountains. In the northern part of this
basin, the river could be found flowing westward. It turned
though and flowed in a north-south direction in the west part
of the basin, turned again in the south part of the basin, and
eventually joined itself in the northern part of the basin. This,
of course, was the origin of the name Round River. In addition
to this peculiarity though, the river reversed its direction of flow
at irregular intervals.

For eons of time, no particular note was taken of this strange
flow pattern. To the Indians, the river was as good to drink
from flowing in one direction as in the other. In either
direction, the water was rather brackish. The Forty Niners on
their way to the California gold fields had no way of knowing,
on their second crossing, that this was the same river they
crossed some forty days previously. They also didn't linger long
enough to see the reversal of flow.

Eventually, the river came to the attention of the Bureau of
Reclamation as did all western rivers. A team of field engineers
was given the responsibility of designing and locating a
hydroelectric project. The reversal of flow made this most
frustrating. What was designed as the forebay on one week
would lie in the location of the tailrace on a subsequent week.
Many months of labor and ingenuity were spent on this
problem with no productive results. Ultimately, the problem
was solved with the Squeeves Pump by an extraordinary genius
whose name, unfortunately, has not been preserved.

Initially, the problem appeared fundamentally one of
hydrometeorology solved through creation of an analog with
use of a polynomial algorithm. This required discrete dynamic
dimensionality reached through a matrix of eigenvectors.
However, propagation of a parametric relationship trended
toward configuration with supercritical harmonics. The problem
was therefore more electric than hydrologic.

Basically, there was an attenuation of electromagnetic
transients. Damping resistors provided improved
ferro-resonance and a more transient flashover voltage; but, as
you know, the impedance of an infinite bus results in
sparsity-directed decomposition, with series compensation,
reenergization, and a step-front thyristor value. He therefore
processed the subtransient reactive recursively through a
tertiary transducer and, with the Squeeves Pump, reversed the
flow of that mighty river.

Yes, the above article is an April Fool's joke, but the attribution
is correct!

The preceding article was published in the April 1995
issue of Lithosphere, the official bulletin of the
Fallbrook [California] Gem and Mineral Society, Inc; Richard Busch
(Editor).

The material is in the public domain, and may be republished freely.

Last updated: 18 September 2002
http://geopress.rbnet.net/roundriv.htm